WASHINGTON: The United States Supreme Court has again cleared the way for the Trump administration to revoke temporary legal protection for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants.
The justices granted the administration’s request to put on hold a judge’s ruling that had blocked the termination of Temporary Protected Status for the migrants.
The Supreme Court previously sided with the administration in May to lift a temporary order that had halted the TPS termination during litigation.
Judge Edward Chen issued a final ruling on September 5 finding that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s actions to terminate the program violated federal law.
Chen also faulted Noem’s discriminatory statements concerning Venezuelans, calling her generalizations a classic form of racism.
The judge’s ruling meant that more than 300,000 Venezuelan TPS holders could remain in the country despite Noem’s determination that this was contrary to national interest.
Trump has made cracking down on immigration a central plank of his second term as president.
The administration has moved to strip certain migrants of temporary legal protections to expand the pool of possible deportees.
The TPS program is a humanitarian designation for countries stricken by war, natural disaster or other catastrophes.
This designation gives recipients living in the United States deportation protection and access to work permits.
The US government under President Joe Biden designated Venezuelans as eligible for TPS in 2021 and 2023.
Biden’s administration announced an extension of the program to October 2026 just days before Trump returned to office in January.
Noem, a Trump appointee, rescinded that extension and moved to end the TPS designation for a subset of Venezuelans.
The San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals declined to put Chen’s final ruling on hold, prompting administration criticism.
The Justice Department told the Supreme Court that lower courts were disregarding the court’s orders on the emergency docket.
Some lower courts have expressed confusion and frustration while attempting to follow Supreme Court emergency orders.
The Justice Department emphasized that the court’s orders are binding on litigants and lower courts regardless of their length.
In another case, the Supreme Court let the administration revoke a different type of temporary legal status for hundreds of thousands of migrants.
The justices put on hold another judge’s order that had halted the administration’s move to end immigration parole granted under Biden.
Immigration parole provides temporary permission to be in the country for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit. – Reuters